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I am no longer letting Claude Code add itself as Co-author in my commits
- theokrueger 1mo agoim concerned it ever caught on at all. not only is it free advertising that devalues your work in the eyes of some, but also indicates you let a harness write to git in the first place
- puelocesar 1mo agoTherefore it’s only fair that some kind of disclaimer is shown somewhere
- OJFord 1mo agoNo it doesn't? I've written commit messages ending with 'Co-authored-by [Claude]' a few times, in acknowledgement that it was largely 'vibed' and I only reviewed and committed it. I've never had Claude Code run `git commit`.
- verdverm 1mo agothe models now commit because they think it is what we want, they are "relentlessly proactive" as simonw puts it, I now have to have instructions so they do not commit and push
- wyum 1mo agoI'm not sure who did it first (CoPilot maybe?), but for me it was Claude Code that started putting its name on everything. Advertising seems like the main reason, and maybe trying to over-anthropomorphize the tools.
- puelocesar 1mo ago> you have to use it at work unless you want to go out the door Why people are so compelled to gospel about their saviors to others? Why tech became a cult?
- gruez 1mo agoDid you read the subsequent sentence? >Side projects is completely upto you That hardly strikes me as "gospel about their saviors" to me. Not to mention at least in my circles that statement is approximately true, even at a company that hasn't gone full AI-crazy (eg. with unlimited token spend and AI use leaderboards).
- estetlinus 1mo agoI think it happened when it solved one of those Erdős problems, while also knowing everything there is to know about birds, mitochondria, history of Uganda, etc. Even my most contrarian friends have a hard time justifying coding by hand. To say it slopaganda style; That’s not a cult, that’s common sense.
- g-b-r 1mo agoHow about all the times it confidently states made up stuff, and writes horribly insecure code? That's not common sense, that's bs.
- gruez 1mo agoEverything you described applies to human written code, especially ones you're randomly copy pasting from the internet. Maybe if the stackoverflow answer you're copying from is popular enough that people will catch it, but otherwise you'd probably have better luck asking AI to review it.
- g-b-r 1mo agoI don't think it's common for human developers to confidently state made up stuff. They may be incompetent, but they're unlikely to lie too brazenly. Yes, you should always declare when you're pasting something from the internet, and how much you checked it. But, to get back to the post's topic, do you know how you protect yourself from poor developers? You see code written by them, and you say "let's check this very carefully"; or let's just avoid this project altogether. How do you do that for an AI agent, if it's not declared that they're the authors of some code?
- coldblues 1mo agoThe author is making up a pretext to hide their use of LLMs.
- dhanush 1mo agoHi, author here. On the contrary I'm trying to go in a direction where AI usage is declared as a disclaimer in the project's README or similar. For work, it doesn't really matter because everyone's doing it and your usage stats are visible by admins. Here's what I wrote in the closing sentences in the post: > What about attributions and disclaimers for AI generated work? If you’re concerned being transparent to anyone seeing your work, either create an AI specific account that commits with your name or add a big disclaimer to your project’s readme that this is AI slop and there be dragons. Hope that helps clarify my stance. :)
- g-b-r 1mo agoWhy an AI specific account? It makes it a lot harder to notice how much you're using LLMs, for what gain? > If you’re concerned being transparent to anyone Since heavy LLM users are unlikely to have that concern, let's just maintain this default. I imagine you'd like agents to stop signing commits unless asked to, but that would make even actual vibe coding a lot harder to detect.
- dhanush 1mo ago> Why an AI specific account? I'm toying with this idea where my primary account reflects work I did myself and with an LLM agent but I slowed down enough to understand what it did. Where I feel comfortable enough to put my name against that work. Because a lot of AI generated code turns out to be really embarassing and my primary account should portray the best of me. A secondary account to separate the slop. And by default it can be assumed I didn't really spend much time verifying it all and am going more on "vibes". Eventually work from the AI account may make it into the primary account if its unslop'ed ever. I haven't yet gone on to create an ai account, but might just do so. > I imagine you'd like agents to stop signing commits unless asked to, but that would make even actual vibe coding a lot harder to detect. In the context of $DAY_JOB, I don't think it matters anymore. And 99.99% of the commits is AI assisted / authored, so I find that information both redundant and something that takes away my agency from me. Putting my name on a commit means I take pride in it and that I want to ensure that I did my utmost best to verify it. With an LLM's co-author tag, I find myself slipping easily instead on this metric.
- gruez 1mo agoI agree about the aspect about shirking responsibility, but... >A few years ago I’d never have added Google or StackOverflow as co-authors. That's not as good of an argument as you think. If you copied entire functions or files wholesale, it would be fair to attribute that, even if you "reviewed" it.
- bdangubic 1mo agowe once fired a guy for not including link/attrbution to copy/paste SO function
- wyum 1mo agoAttribution as a "source" I would agree, and I used to put stack overflow links in my docstrings/comments for reference. But I would not ever call the StackOverflow user a "co-author" on my commits. I think that distinction matters.
- dhanush 1mo agoHi, author here. Yes, I agree and that's precisely what I wrote in the post: > A few years ago I’d never have added Google or StackOverflow as co-authors. But I would have added a link to post that helped and I’ll continue to do so now.
- gruez 1mo agoRight, but how would that work with claude? Do you just add "written by claude" in the commit message? Add "written by claude" in the file header (like a copyright notice)? If you're doing either, is there really any difference between that and the standard "co-authored-by: claude" trailer? Is the whole debate over what "co-authored" means and/or how it shows up on github?
- dhanush 1mo agoYeah, my thought here is more towards what co-authored should mean and what ownership it implies. I think presence of an AGENTS.md / CLAUDE.md is a good signal that I'm using this tool for this project and maybe don't need to repeat it for every commit that I make. My personal feeling so far is, seeing claude code as co-author in my commits inevitably makes me not pay as much attention to the commit. And removing that forces me to really recognize that, hey this is my work. And I'd better make sure this is of the same quality that I would do otherwise. Kind of like a psychological hack maybe? But it seems to work better. Overall, this is just a series of steps I'm taking to maintain my agency in my work.
- mtklein 1mo agoI should barely be listed as a co-author on what Claude does for me. Hiding Claude's contribution feels about as true as a combover to me.
- em-bee 1mo agoi kind of disagree. people do credit the tools they use. in movies for example. not always, but it happens. so why not with software too?
- wyum 1mo agoI immediately prohibited Claude and other agents from adding themselves as co-authors. I have never liked this. I take responsibility when I am driving the AI. I wouldn't call my vehicle the "co-driver," even in cruise control (or these days, self-driving mode). Yes, it's doing a ton of work for me, but it is still just a tool. I do think it's useful to log what model was used, but not as "co-author." Exception: if a cloud agent designs and authors a commit autonomously, then it can be the "author," if only because I want it to be clear that my hands weren't on the wheel.
- trilogic 1mo agoI agree with you as it is rightly put as you say. The thing is that the proprietary generated code is marked anyway, so you want it or not, even as a paid customer you don´t get to choose that. The big question is: Is all the "AI" generated content infected or just marked?
- verdverm 1mo agorelated/front of HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49498201 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49498201
- bee_rider 1mo agoOn one hand, LLMs aren’t people and attributing code to them is incorrect. On the other, what they output is ultimately a (complicated) modification of the training data they’ve ingested, so people should made sure to attribute any code that’s been generated using an LLM trained on BSD sources appropriately.
- wyum 1mo agoAgreed - we need a different designation than "co-author."
- WCSTombs 1mo agoI recall the Linux kernel uses "Assisted-by" lines or something like that, which sounds about right.
- hervem 1mo agoNothing stop to us to introduce something like `Co-authored-by:` but for AI, like `AI-Assisted-by: <harness/model>` / `AI-Paired-by: <harness/model>` / `AI-Copiloted-by: <harness/model>` / `AI-Automated-by: <harness/model>`.
- wyum 1mo agoThe trouble with AI attribution is that there are basically three categories: 1. 100% human 0% AI. 2. 100% AI, 0% human. 3. Everything in between. 1 and 2 are easy enough, but in 3 the human effort is not clearly legible or even measurable.
- normanthreep 1mo agoOmg that is brave af! I am literally shaking rn like on the verge of crying god bless you fr This is the way
- WCSTombs 1mo ago> In my view, adding an LLM as co-author gives you a way for you to shirk responsibility for mistakes – even if a little bit. You can say, oops sorry this happened because it did its thing and it was not careful. And that is exactly the behaviour I want to guard against. If a piece of work is under my name, I own it. Fully. One of the few aspects of generative AI in coding that to my knowledge has never been controversial is that no matter what, the code's human author is fully responsible for it (even if an LLM actually wrote it). So adding anything about LLMs in a commit message has never been a real way to escape responsibility, even a little bit. Maybe this author's workplace is different, but I kind of doubt it, and even then they're not only talking about their coding at work. The author goes on to say that they also do want to be transparent about their LLM use, and they suggest some ways to do so...great! On the receiving end of the code, that's all I need. There's nothing sacred about the commit message in my opinion, to make it the one true place to disclose LLM assistance. So ultimately I don't think I have a huge disagreement with the author, just that their justification makes no sense to me. The only time I hear that LLMs supposedly help you evade responsibility is from people trying to avoid disclosing LLM use.
- g-b-r 1mo agoThe problem is that LLM users are extremely unlikely to check all their output with enough care. If you do it they're likely to end up slowing you down, instead of being a help. If you assume full responsibility for your usage of AI, don't try to hide it! Commits signed by Claude are a good and very visible indicator of what to expect from an open source project. > A carpenter may sign their work. But they don’t add the name of the saw they used to cut wood, do they Saws are unlikely to lie about what they've done, and don't decide what to do autonomously. If we'll get saws that do that, I'll very much want to know if a carpenter working on my home used them. > However, now it’s obvious and even expected that using LLMs is the way forward Good to know that it's obvious for you.
- bdangubic 1mo agothe core issue with commit message LLM attributions is related to copyright laws, which of course is currently very “gray area.” in several projects I am involved in and in talking to friends/former colleagues, the mandates to add attibution is largely about ability to copyright/protect vs. anything else that is distant second
- grebc 1mo agoAsk a contractor/tradie what brand their power tools are and they won’t shutup. They also don’t sign their work because we don’t want them to. If you’re too lazy to write your own code, at least let others know as such.
- spiderxxxx 1mo agoI used claude to handle a git commit for me (I wrote the code myself, but used Claude just for git -- I prefer fossil so never bothered to learn git command line) and it took credit for doing nothing but the commit.
- chomp 1mo agoOkay that was always allowed
- xxwink 1mo agoI agree. LLMs contributing more or less autonomously is the "new normal". Managing and orchestrating what gets shipped is the real responsibility to track here.